Hair Study Criticized In Article Quackery Foe Says Results Worthless

The study of the U.S. laboratories was by Stephen Barrett, an active opponent of health quackery. The report appears in today's issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Barrett reported that hair samples from two local teen-agers were sent under assumed names to the labs. The results "varied considerably between identical samples sent to the same laboratory and from lab to lab."

"The computerized interpretations for the apparently healthy teen-aged girls used in this study were voluminous and bizarre," Barrett continues.

"For example, one report from laboratory B on each of the subjects suggested that they had an 'excessive tendency to neuromuscular problems.' For subject 2, this laboratory reported 'slight tendency' toward emotional problems in one report, but 'critical tendency' in the other."

One report from another laboratory cited 27 abnormal conditions possibly needing further investigation, including goiter, uremia and "depression of central nervous system," he said in the article in the prestigious medical journal.

Although the procedure has "limited value" as a screening device for heavy metal exposure, Barrett called it "unscientific, economically wasteful and probably illegal" as a means of managing disease and nutrient imbalances.

It is an invalid technique for identifying an individual's currentexcesses or deficiencies of essential or non-essential elements, he said, and should not be used to recommend dietary supplements.

"For most minerals, laboratory standards of 'normal' or 'usual' varied so much from laboratory to laboratory that a given mineral value might have been considered low by some laboratories, normal by others and high by others," he said in the published account.

A practicing psychiatrist and writer/editor of about 20 books, Barrett said he considered performing the study six years ago "but didn't want to spend a lot of money."

He said the published project cost about $1,500 and was funded by grants from the Dorothy Rider Pool Health Care Trust, Allentown.

"The hardest part was getting enough hair," Barrett said, explaining that he needed "tens of thousands" of pieces of hair from the nape of the neck, close to the scalp. Two of his daughter's friends, who had long hair, supplied the samples.

Dr. Richard Perline, director of research for the Lehigh Valley Hospital Center, helped design the experiment and provided the statistical calculations.

Hospital Center photographer John Dittbrenner supplied the photograph of an array of analyses from five different laboratories studied for the journal article.